Mental Time Travel: A New Case of Autobiographical Hypermnesia

Autobiographical reminiscence refers to our means to recollect experiences which have formed our lives since childhood. It consists of emotional and sensory reminiscences of locations, moments, and folks, in addition to a set of factual data—equivalent to names and dates—that permits us to orient ourselves after we attempt to recall an episode from the previous.

For most of us, these reminiscences are roughly vivid relying on how previous they’re or how a lot significance we connect to them. Thanks to the dynamic nature of reminiscence, they lose sharpness over time, fade away utterly, or are partially rewritten. But a small variety of folks—solely a handful of instances have been described in scientific literature—have entry to such a wealth of autobiographical particulars that they will hyperlink particular occasions to any given date on the calendar.

Having reminiscences of our lives permits us to assemble a story of ourselves and stabilize our sense of id. Autobiographical reminiscence is subsequently related to a sort of consciousness referred to as “autonoetic”, which permits us to take a psychological journey via time to relive previous occasions, challenge ourselves into the long run, or into imaginary conditions.

Hyperthymestic folks can journey via time of their minds with extraordinary ease and depth. “Studying this atypical cognitive functioning could help us better understand how autobiographical memory works, as well as the neurological disorders that affect it,” says Laurent Cohen, neurologist and co-head of the PICNIC Lab at Paris Brain Institute.

A Memory Palace for Organizing Memories

According to case stories within the scientific literature[1] and accounts within the media, hyperthymesia is commonly described as a distressing means: painful, even traumatic reminiscences can accumulate uncontrollably. Some people additionally really feel overwhelmed by ineffective anecdotal data.

Nevertheless, Valentina La Corte and Laurent Cohen examined the case of TL[2], a 17-year-old lady who seems to have vital management over how she accesses her reminiscences.

TL distinguishes between two varieties. On the one hand, her “black memory” corresponds to encyclopedic information primarily acquired in school and carries no specific emotional that means. On the opposite hand, the reminiscences of her life are organized inside a classy psychological house—a sort of reminiscence palace—that she will visualize on demand. 

These are filed by theme and chronological order in binders, that are stored in a room with a really low ceiling that she calls “the white room.” TL mentally scans via them to retrieve episodes associated to her household life, holidays, buddies, or childhood objects. Some reminiscences are even saved within the type of textual content messages or pictures.

The lady makes use of psychological illustration instruments to isolate reminiscences linked to detrimental feelings equivalent to disappointment, grief, or misery. For occasion, her grandfather’s loss of life is stored in a chest contained in the white room. She additionally makes use of two adjoining rooms: a “pack ice” room she makes use of to assuage her anger, a “problems” room to replicate on difficulties, and a “military room” populated by troopers, which appeared in her thoughts when her father left dwelling to hitch the military.

Assessing Autobiographical Memory

Researchers lack sturdy instruments to confirm whether or not hyperthymestic reminiscences are dependable, particularly after they concern distant durations. Like the remainder of the inhabitants, hyperthymestics are liable to false reminiscences and reminiscence distortions.

However, Valentina La Corte and Laurent Cohen used the Episodic Test of Autobiographical Memory (TEMPau) and the Temporal Extended Autobiographical Memory Task (TEEAM), which assess how simply folks can mentally journey via time, the richness of the reminiscences they report, and the way they relate to their very own narrative.

Their findings point out that TL relives moments of her life with distinctive depth and vividness. Sometimes as an exterior observer, typically as a protagonist, she will re-examine particulars from completely different factors of view. When researchers requested her to think about future occasions, she offered an unusually wealthy quantity of temporal, spatial, and perceptual data, far past what an strange particular person can produce.

These observations reinforce the concept that psychological journey into the long run depends on mechanisms much like these utilized in aware exploration of the previous. In each instances, sensory data appears to play a vital position.

New Avenues for Research

Some research recommend that hyperthymesia is related to overactivation of mind networks concerned in autobiographical reminiscence and sure visible areas. However, no neuroanatomical variations have but been discovered between hyperthymesics and people with typical reminiscence.

“It is difficult to generalize findings about hyperthymesia, since they rely on only a few cases. Does ageing affect the memories of these individuals? Do their mental time-travel abilities depend on age? Can they learn to control the accumulation of memories? We have many questions, and everything remains to be discovered. An exciting avenue of research lies ahead,” concludes Valentina La Corte.